We all have access to dreamscapes. The now much vilified Sigmund Freud taught us, at the very least, that the psychic disturbances which yield the dream-making process open up realms of 'otherness' and suggestion.

Long before the term 'subconscious' existed, the poet Coleridge had spoken of whole verses of poetry appearing fully formed in his mind, from somewhere in the imaginative aether on waking from deep slumber.

His poem 'Kubla Khan' was said to have emerged partly from the narcosis of the sleeping world, though it seems likely that daily use of Laudanum shaped and coloured his unfinished masterpiece.

Nor was Coleridge alone in his sense of indebtedness. With our mental aerials pointing in the right direction, such imaginings are avenues to the creation of art.

Beyond the kingdom of dream, myths and stories may be paths to what Jung called the 'collective unconscious', our universal human archetypes or instincts. In this sense, stories provide us with a means of viewing the innermost, and most primitive, recesses of our minds.

It is not difficult to see how the exploration and celebration of such fundamental, often ancient, reference points may encourage us to unearth our own creative identities through previously hidden conduits.

Facing the most painful moments of myth or legend is, as the Greek Tragic poets found, therapeutic; it enables the listener to find parallels in his or her own life, and to re-formulate the narrative and moral complexities of fable as metaphor.

And it may help he or she to create their own stories as a response to what they find in the psychological depths. Whilst Aristotle is no longer on hand to dispense the wisdom of Katharsis, Settle Stories have enlisted the services of renowned story-interpreter, teller, writer and hypnotherapist, Adam Sargant, to conduct an online, six-week creative writing course commencing in June.
The programme will include instruction, group mentoring, and the exploration of those boundaries which often inhibit creative expression.